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Lecturing angels, ignoring villains

8 August 2002 - The description of one observer -- a "bizarre waste of time" -- seems like an apt evaluation of what took place in New York on Tuesday, when a United Nations committee on the elimination of racial discrimination lectured Canadian officials on our alleged need to do more to protect the rights of Aboriginal, black and Muslim citizens. Our representatives, good Canadians that they are, nodded and earnestly promised to do better. Instead, they should have rolled their eyes and walked out. Canada is one of the world's strongest democracies, with constitutional government firmly entrenched and a hair-trigger human rights apparatus that roars into action when the slightest hint of discrimination is alleged. We have no need to prostrate ourselves before the UN.

Two years ago, Australia faced similarly misplaced UN scrutiny. The UN had issued hysterical report after hysterical report falsely blasting the land Down Under as a virtual hell-on-earth for non-white minorities. This barrage stunned Australia's political class, which, like Canada's, has sterling pro-UN credentials. John Howard, the Prime Minister, responded swiftly: He declared in August, 2000, that, henceforth, United Nations observers would no longer have carte blanche to investigate allegations of racism in Australia. Observer teams would have to provide prima facie evidence of discrimination, or else be denied entry.

Mr. Howard has the right idea. The human rights abuses that require the UN's attention aren't in Australia or Canada, but are taking place in countries such as Zimbabwe, where farmers are being murdered and pillaged with impunity by mobs closely controlled by the government; or in Iran, where fundamentalist gangs enforce brutal summary justice on people who don't share their rigid interpretation of Islam. But when was the last time the UN took decisive action against those regimes? UN functionaries prefer the path of least resistance: Rather than take dictators to task, they lambaste Anglo-American democracies such as Canada, which are more likely to meekly submit.

At the height of the UN's hectoring of his country in 2000, an Australian civil servant noted: "If you are comparing [Australia's human rights record] with arbitrary arrest, detention and execution, and having your arms chopped off for belonging to the wrong political party, then almost every issue in Australia seems to pale into insignificance." The same goes for this country. It's time for Bill Graham, Canada's Foreign Affairs Minister, to follow the Australians' lead.

Source:The National Post (Canada)

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